“And leave some random possibly catastrophic device hurtling through the galaxy to do who knows what?” Kaasha said. “I don’t think so.”
Peekpa shook her head and let out an ominous groan, then explained something to Kaasha.
“First of all,” Kaasha said with a smirk, “the Ewok word for non-Ewoks literally translates to ‘nakeds,’ so, you’re welcome for that tidbit.”
“Peekpa’s the only one not wearing pants here,” Han pointed out, “except Chewie.”
“Yeah, it’s about the hair,” Kaasha said. “And they have a whole other name for Wookiees, I believe, and it’s not derogatory like nakeds is.”
“Well, damn,” Han said.
“Anyway, Peekpa is tired of us nakeds leaving our big-deal weapons scattered all over the galaxy for people to use all willy-nilly.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Lando muttered.
“And second of all, she says it is a weapon, and it’s a powerful one. At least, it has the potential to be used that way, even if that’s not its sole use. Whatever it is, the Empire being as eager as they were to get their hands on it should tell us all we need to know about whether it’s okay to just leave it out there in the galaxy for anyone to find. Peekpa says it would be very…very…”
“Pritka pritka,” the Ewok insisted, cutting in. Then again but with more emphasis: “Prikta pritka strrapkit paka di. Fa!” She closed out the explanation with both furry hands thrown up into the air and a little explosive screech.
“Very…very, very dangerous,” Kaasha finished. “Even if Fyzen is out of the picture.”
Chewie growled and waved a fuzzy arm at the holomap.
“Chewie’s got a point,” Han said. “We’re still working with a cold trail and a faulty signal, best we can tell. Maybe that old loopy Imperial might be of some help.”
“If he’s even loopy at all.” Lando cocked an eyebrow, rubbing his goatee. “You know the Empire was good for writing someone off once they were no longer of use. And…wait a minute!” He hurried over to the holotable and pulled up a map of the galaxy, studied it for a moment. “I knew it!”
“What?” Kaasha asked.
“Grava is in the Kallea sector!”
Chewie roared a question.
“Those…” Lando dug through his pockets, pulled out the small cloth sack they’d stolen from Poppy Delu back on Frander’s Bay. “The fichas! Florx found traces of soil from Kallea sector on ’em.”
“Then we definitely have to pay the admiral a visit,” Han said.
“All right,” Lando said, leaning his hands on the rim of the holodisplay. “Here it is: We have two ships now, so we split up. Chewie, you, Kaasha, and Taka head to the last known transmission point of the Phylanx. See what you can find. Take my Ugnaught, too, since you might need some help with droids.”
Peekpa ran across the room and latched onto Chewie’s leg, muttering something excitedly.
“Yeah, take the Ewok, too,” Lando said. “See if she can work out any kind of pattern for those transmission points.”
Chewie nodded and let out a hoarse yelp, placing Peekpa on his shoulder.
“Why is she so attached to you anyway?” Lando asked.
“Turns out Chewie saved her sister’s life in the Battle of Endor,” Han said. “So now she owes him fuzzy snuggles forever apparently.”
“Well, shoot,” Lando said, nodding approvingly.
“Personally, I’d take a life debt over fuzzy snuggles, but that’s just me.”
Lando looked at Kaasha. “Stay alive for me please, Kaash?”
She wiggled her eyebrows. “Always, Land.”
“Good. And keep the rest of these troublemakers safe, too, while you’re at it.” He chuckled, allowing the glow of her gaze to warm him for a few seconds. “All right,” he said, clicking back into General Calrissian mode and tapping some coordinates into the holotable computer. “Chewie, unless we hear from your team, we’ll rendezvous at the last transmission spot.”
Chewie agreed with a roar, turned toward the air lock.
“Try not to ruin this ship,” Taka called. “It’s pretty.”
HAN STOOD IN A DARKENED motel corridor, blaster raised. He was trembling slightly and he wasn’t sure why. Okay, yes he was: This damn place gave him the heebie-jeebies, that was why. The motel behind Freerago’s was as dingy as they came, with crumbling plaster ceilings drip-dropping pungent liquids (at least now Han knew why folks always called it Peerago’s, though). Somehow he’d gotten separated from Chewie, and because they were on the wrong side of the tracks on a worn-down kriffing satellite, his comm service was terrible. He’d tried reaching Sana, too, to let her know they had Fyzen on the run (or did he have them on the run? Han wasn’t so sure), but all he’d gotten in reply were scratchy blurts and snippets of other conversations.
And the walls seemed to crawl with pesky little critters, or maybe that was Han’s imagination. Either way, he’d run hard down several corridors now and was out of breath and sweaty and Chewie-less and without the damndest idea where Gor had gotten to. Grunts and squeals and the staticky fizz of a poor-quality holocast reached him from the various rooms on either side of the hall. Something wet and gelatinous seeped from under the door nearest to him, its slowly rolling waves of muck reflecting shards of the blinking orange light at the far end of the hall.
Han wasn’t sure whether to go forward or back; it hardly seemed to matter. Fyzen could be anywhere, could’ve busted into any of these rooms, could be slowly creeping up this very corridor for all Han knew. The thought made Han spin around fast, too fast, and he collided with something—no, someone who had been standing there in the darkness, way too close. They were either made out of metal or wearing some thick armor.
“Gah!” Han yelled, stumbling back a step and holding his blaster up.
“Ohh dear,” a deep and solemn voice droned. “Seems you’ve woken me up.” Two yellow mechanical eyes blinked open in the darkness, their glow illuminating the cracked and mold-stained surface of the far wall.
“Why are you sleeping in a hallway?” Han demanded.
The eyes blinked again and now they were red. The droid’s head swung to look directly at Han. He squinted, holding up a hand to block the glare.
“Kill,” the droid seethed, its voice a shrill whisper. “Killll.”
“Whoa there, buddy,” Han said, taking another step back. “No need to get grimy.”
With a whirring motion, the droid’s arms rose and it plodded toward Han.
“Hey,” Han said, then he let his blaster do the talking. The first shot singed the top of the droid’s shoulder, lighting it up for a flickering moment. The second slammed home between the thing’s eyes and knocked it backward.
The two red bulbs still glared up at the ceiling. “Killlll,” the droid moaned.
A couple more blaster shots shut it up for good.
There were footsteps approaching from behind when Han finished shooting. He spun, saw four sets of bright-red eyes teetering toward him through the darkness, and ran backward, hopping over the first droid’s still-smoldering body and unleashing from his blaster on the rest as he went.
“SEE,” LANDO SAID, CHEESING AT the admittedly impressive navicomp datapad. “Luxury!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Han said, clicking a few buttons and setting their course for the Grava system. “Let’s get to this weird little moon and find out what we gotta find out and be out.”
Lando scoffed and wrapped his fingers around the stainless-steel, untarnished hyperdrive thruster control. “So grumpy. This’ll be like old times!”
“Old times,” Han scoffed.
Lando clicked on the comm and raised the Vermillion. “We ’bout to be out, y’all. Happy hunting and may the Force be with you.”
“Copy, General Calrissian,” Taka said. “May the Force be with
you.”
Lando eased the thrusters forward and sighed as the stars leapt into a blurry haze around them. “Old times,” he said with a warm chuckle.
“You really miss those days?” Han asked. “Gallivanting around the galaxy and getting into any kind of trouble we could find?”
“I mean, when you put it that way,” Lando said, laughing, “yes!”
Han rolled his eyes. “I guess we had some fun.”
“But seriously, I wouldn’t go back. I made a lotta mistakes back then. Guess I had to make them to become the man I ended up, but still…”
“We both did,” Han said quietly, and for a while, they let stars speed past in silence.
“You think this’ll end it?” Han asked.
“I think it’s bigger than we’ve realized,” Lando said. “I just don’t know how yet.”
“Yeah,” Han said. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
They slid out of hyperspace and roared toward a dusty red-and-orange moon with splotches of dark green and a few bright-yellow expanses.
“The asylum is on the crest of that mountain range,” Lando said as the rising and falling surface became clearer and clearer. They burst through a thin cloud layer and then zoomed along over the tops of trees.
“There!” Han said. Up ahead, an ancient fortress loomed over a rocky cliff like a stony outgrowth. “But what’s that flickering in the air around it?”
Something gleamed in the midday sun. It looked, Lando thought, like—
A dull thud brought the Chevalier into a skidding spiral across an invisible surface crescenting through the sky. Alarms blurted out as the forest spun beneath them, then the fortress itself.
“Ray shield!” Lando grunted. “Blew out our secondary thrusters and maybe our shields, too.” Both of them furrowed their brows as their hands flew across control panels.
“Bring her down,” Han said over the bleeping alarms. “There should be an open patch…” They careened past the mountain, and a wide desert plain stretched beneath them toward the horizon. “…Right there,” Han finished, allowing himself a slight smile.
Lando grimaced. “Gonna be a bumpy one.”
“Pshaw,” Han said. “Could do this with my eyes closed.”
They banked over the last few treetops and then dropped suddenly. Lando scoffed, pulling hard on the thrusters and lifting the Chevalier’s nose up just enough to keep them from catapulting into a disastrous tailspin. “I didn’t say it was hard,” he said, careening right as a blast of desert wind rushed past. “I just said…” They plummeted into sudden free fall again, altitude alarms blaring, and then the thrusters burst back to life, lifting them back into the sky a few seconds from total destruction. “…it was gonna be a…” Lando eased them down tail-first, the uneven desert floor sending shudders and groans through the whole craft. The landing gear reached for purchase, and Lando slowly lowered the nose down as the whole shuttle screeched to a stop. “…bumpy one,” he finished, releasing the steering shaft and sitting back with a big ol’ Lando grin plastered across his face.
Han exhaled. “Seems like you’re out of practice, old man. That cushy executive lifestyle has gone to your head.”
“Out of—” Lando grumbled. “Says the washed-up flight instructor!”
“Washed-up?” Han clicked open the blast shield, letting a thick blast of desert heat into the cockpit. “Why, you self-serving, good-for-nothing, profiteering…”
“I could say the same about you,” Lando said, standing and shaking off the ache of lightspeed travel, “you sit-around, don’t-know-how-good-you’ve-got-it, moping old…”
Han grabbed a tool kit from under his seat. “…attention-starved, cape-wearing…”
Lando picked up the datapad from under his. “…Non-Wookiee savior-complex-having…”
Han hopped out of the shuttle and headed over to the smoking wing thrusters. “…Skirt-chasing, fear-of-commitment-having…”
Lando climbed out on the other side and wired his datapad into the outer shield computer. “…Negligent, tired, sloppy…”
Two hours later, they met back up on the bridge as the sun began to set. “Glad we got all that done,” Han said.
“Yep.” Lando wiped his hands on a silky embroidered hand towel. “I’d been wanting to get that stuff off my chest for ages.”
“I meant the repairs, you old womp rat. Who knows how quickly we’re gonna need to jump out of here, and it’s better we not have to pause on the way out.”
“Oh right,” Lando said. “Shields are back up to full capacity.”
“Good. Wing thrusters are operational again, too.”
“Well, in that case,” Lando said as the gangplank lowered to reveal the dazzling fortress spiraling along the mountaintop, “shall we?”
“I believe we shall,” Han said. They walked off the ship and out into the desert, their shadows stretching long toward the tree line ahead. “Do you really think I’m sloppy?”
* * *
—
“What kind do you think it is?” Lando asked, gazing at the shimmering ray shield that rose up over the mountain.
“Whatever it is, it’s damn effective,” Han said. “Barely registers on the sensors. Can only kind of make it out here on the ground. That’s expensive tech. And it nearly blew us to pieces, even with you pulling up just enough to skim the surface.”
“Still…” Lando scanned the perimeter. “There’s gotta be a generator somewhere.”
“Could be anywhere. And anyway, then what? You wanna blow it up? We’re just here to ask some questions, not storm the castle.”
“Who are we going to question if we can’t get in?”
“Maybe there’s a doorbell somewhere. What’s that?” Something moved along the slope off to the side. Two somethings, Lando realized. Hooded figures, walking down what must’ve been a stairwell hidden deep in the underbrush. Yes—there, a little below them, a stone gargoyle stood partially concealed by the underbrush, and farther down a part of the banister could be seen between the lush green fronds.
“Guess we could ask them,” Han said dubiously. “Looks like the stairwell lets out just over there.”
They made their way to what turned out to be a small gate in the shield that stood at the foot of the forest stairwell. The two hooded figures reached the gate soon after they did. One tapped something into a panel, and the gate slid open. For a moment, the four of them just stared at one another. There wasn’t much to make out beyond the slow rise and fall of their hunched-over shoulders with each breath.
“We’re here to see one of your wards,” Lando said. “Admiral Ruas Fastent.”
“Ahhahaha,” rasped one of them. “Admiral Fastent, hehehe…”
“I’m afraid that’s not very helpful,” Lando said.
“Admiral Fastent is not a ward,” the other said, spitting the word out as if it had gone sour in his mouth. “He is, as all of us organics are”—again with the obvious distaste—“a humble servant in this house of peace. And his name is not Admiral Fastent anymore.”
Han cocked an eyebrow. “A humble servant you say? Would whatever-his-new-name-is humbly mind if we asked him a few questions?”
The two hooded figures conferred in hushed voices, then turned back to Han and Lando. “You may pass.”
CHEWIE GROWLED SOMEWHERE UP AHEAD. It was a growl Han knew well, the one Chewie only used when he was fighting for his life. “I’m coming, buddy,” Han yelled, barreling down yet another dark motel corridor.
But was he? The dank and tangled labyrinth had left him utterly turned around. The unceasing drips and creaks and howls of its denizens didn’t help. And the constant barrage of homicidal droids Han had to dispatch made things downright chaotic. It sounded like Chewie was one floor up and somewhere in the next set of hallways, but Han couldn’t be sure.
&n
bsp; Another pair of murderous red orbs appeared in the darkness ahead. Han sent a few blaster shots ahead of him, knocking the droid back. It lay in a crumpled heap by the time he reached it, but those lights were still illuminated, which meant—“Arg!” Han grunted as metal fingers clamped around his ankle.
“I have captured you you are my prisoner I have accomplished a great victory in the bat—”
Han blasted away, point-blank between the eyes, until the droid shut up. It didn’t let go, though. Up ahead, Chewie was still yelling, and now the sound of his bowcaster shredding again and again through air and steel filled the night.
“Dang! Useless! Heap of! Metal!” Han growled, punctuating each word with a blast. He managed to sever the arm from the body but still couldn’t unwrap the damn thing’s clamped fingers.
Blasterfire erupted from somewhere else in the complex—farther ahead and down on the ground floor, Han thought—and there was a lot of it.
“I’m coming, Chewie!” he yelled again, but then he slipped in a puddle of something noxious and gooey and slammed against the wall, only barely managing not to wipe out completely. “Are there no janitors in this god-awful place?” Han yelled. The door beside him opened, spreading a sharp triangle of light across the shadows. A Gran poked his head out, those three black eyes squinting at Han from wrinkled, crusty stalks.
“Oh, you’re early!” the Gran snorted, froth creeping out from the edges of his snout.
“Uh, what?”
“The agency said they weren’t going to send anyone until at least oh nine hundred! But that’s fine, she’s right in here.” He lowered his voice to a shrill whisper. “Did you bring a stormtrooper outfit? She loves that!”
“I thiiink,” Han said. “You got the wrong guy.”
All three of the Gran’s eyes opened wide, then narrowed. “Well, you’ll have to do! Come on then!”
One shot into the wall beside the open door was enough for the Gran to get the point. It retreated with a litany of Malastarian curses and slammed the door.
Last Shot Page 20
